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I headed over to the Echo Roof area with a friend last Friday.
The plan was to climb something like Lady's and Gentlemen or Bulletproof,
then to Echo and on to the big ledge just left of the Echo Roof.
When we got there we noticed a large and very obvious light-brown
swath
of mud and small rocks on the face just right of Bulletproof.
It looked like someone had taken a humongous brush and painted
a stripe down the cliff. What in the world could it be, we wondered?

We decided to do Bulletproof so my partner headed up. When he
got up to the place where the old tree used to be, he called down
that I would simply be amazed by what he was seeing. I kept asking
what he was talking about, but he kept mum. When I got up there
I was just as surprised as he was. Here's what
I saw. Amazingly there was a 6'-8' deep hole
in the rock with a
little bit of water in the bottom. A candy bar wrapper floated
in the water and there were a couple of used pipe-cleaners laying
on the ledge. I personally don't think that there is any way this
was a natural occurrence. The best theory we could come up with
was that a pipe-smoking miner who is also a climber was up there
digging for crystals or the like and just shoveled the dirt from
the old tree hole over the side. There are some quartz crystals
embedded in the rock and perhaps they thought there were more under
the dirt. So where is Sherlock Holmes when you need him?

On another note, while we've had some occasional rain over the
past 5-7 days, overall it's been pretty damn nice. When there's
a little breeze, like on Wednesday, the bugs are actually tolerable.
Days like these and the ones in the fall are why I live here. <grin> I
was out on the Whitehorse slabs with a group from IMCS working
on stuff like knot-passes, belayed rappels and the like all day.
This is what it was like out there at about 2PM Wednesday - a picture-perfect
day... Pretty nice-a, nice-a.

Children's Crusade Update:
The two old bolts on the second pitch of Children's Crusade have
now been replaced. Both were spinner button
heads. One came out
fairly easily, but the other was much
tougher in spite of its
age and the hanger spinning around. And, yes I know, the holes from
the old bolts are still there - unpatched. Sorry 'bout that!
I didn't have any epoxy to fill them in so I'll have to get back
up there later this summer to take care of it. In the meantime
enjoy the new level of safe-climbing.

A Different View:
Instead of climbing last weekend on Father's Day I opted for doing
the family thing. (Smart move, aye?) We decided to paddle from
Glen down to First Bridge in our new canoe. While taking a short
break on a rocky beach at about halfway I noticed a view of Cathedral
and Whitehorse that I've never seen before. From where I stood
it looked like the two
cliffs were actually one.

Slideshow, Saturday June 26 - 7 PM:
You may know Anne Skidmore as one of the folks behind the counter
at IME, but she is quite a bit more. Actually she is a very good
climber and excellent photographer, who won several awards in
this year's Photography special-edition of Climbing Magazine.
This is a great slideshow celebrating women climbers, splitter
cracks, hard granite, and soft sandstone. What more could one
ask for? How about seeing women from the east to the west climbing,
motivating and inspiring one another? Sit back and witness five
strong women from New Hampshire road tripping to Indian Creek
and Yosemite. See clips of women playing on the beautiful boulders
of the Sierra’s, to the mysterious boulder filled forest
of Fontainbleau in France.

For more information contact IME at 603-356-7064. Hope to see
you there.

Here's A Cool Tip:
When I was out climbing with IMCS guide Brad White recently, I
set up an anchor with a cordelette around a tree. I'd been mostly
using the old girth-hitch for this kind of thing it for years,
but Brad showed me an AMGA-approved way to do it that's definitely
a lot better. Here are the steps:

1 - Put the cordelette around the tree with the knot at the back.
2 - Tie an overhand in the the cordelette and cinch it against
the tree, making sure to even the two ends of the cordelette.
3 - In the middle of the remaining 2 loops, tie a overhand figure
eight knot.
4 - Clip into both loops.

I raised the IceCON rating to a 5 today. It's unusual to get a 5 rating this early in the season, but this one has certainly been special. All the climbs in the Amphitheater are IN, as is pretty much everything else at Frankenstein. It's really pretty impressive just how much ice there is out there right now, in spite of how sunny it is. Just goes to show what snow and cold will do for things. That said, we have a VERY BIG round of snow coming in on Saturday evening through early Monday. Predictions are for 2 feet, but if we even get half that it's a big deal. If you're planning on climbing on Sunday just be aware of what that much snow means and please drive safe on the way home.

Mobile Version Of NEClimbs:
Up on one of the Mount Washington Valley's finest crags and want to know what that climb you're looking at is? Or maybe you're on your way up from Boston and want to check out the Ice Report for your upcoming weekend plans. Or more likely, you're at work just want to daydream about your next adventure. Well if you have a smart phone handy, you can get to NEClimbs from anywhere you have cell service. While it doesn't offer every single feature of the site and it's not an "app", in mobile form, it does do a whole lot and is very useful. Here is the live link to the mobile version of NEClimbs:

Check it out and if you have issues on your specific phone, please feel free to let me know.

NEClimbs & White Mountain Report On Facebook:
Join us and LIKE us on Facebook. I'll try and post some interesting pix every Thursday and the latest Ice Report in the season, tho certainly not the whole Report. Here's where you can check it out:

Climbing is a very dangerous sport. You can get hurt or even kill yourself. When you go climbing, you do so of your own free will. Everything on this site is to be taken with a grain of salt. Don't blame us if you get up some totally heinous route, in over your head and fall and hurt yourself.